170 DUFFIELD CASTLE. 



The best account of Masons' Marks with which we are ac- 

 quainted, occurs in Lyon Murray's History of Freemasonry in 

 Scotland (Blackwood, 1873), which has justly been spoken of as 

 " the only historical history of Freemasonry." It is there shown 

 that the possession of marks or devices were common alike to all 

 apprentices, fellows, or masters who chose to pay for having them 

 enrolled. " They were also adopted by the theoretical part of the 

 fraternity, in imitation of their operative brethren." " Whatever," 

 says Mr. Murray, " may have been their original signification as 

 exponents of a secret language, there is no ground for believing 

 that the 16th century mason was guided in the choice of a mark 

 by any consideration of their mystic or symbolical quality, or of 

 their relation to the propositions of Euclid." A large proportion 

 of the earliest registered Scotch marks were rough initials, 

 or an initial of the owner's name, or some sign typical of 

 his name. They were all of a sufficiently simple character 

 to admit of their being cut upon the tools of operative 

 masons, and upon the productions of their handicraft, or used as 

 signatures by such as had not been taught to write. That which 

 Mr. Murray conclusively proves to be true of the Scotch masons 

 of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by their registered 

 marks, we believe to have been in the main true of the masons 

 working in England in the eleventh or twelfth centuries, when the 

 marks on Plate X. were produced. 



Mr. Murray mentions an interesting mark, booked in the 

 records of St. Mary's Chapel, Edinburgh, on St. John's Day, 1667, 

 to one David Salmond. It is composed of lines so arranged as to 

 form the outline of a fish (salmon), and the christian name is 

 represented by the delta shaped head of the fish. May it not be, 

 in the same fashion, that fig. 9 of our Plate X. simply represents a 

 Norman mason of the name of Archer ? And this, although a 

 similar sign, may have been used elsewhere to betoken something 

 else. 



It would seem, however, that some of these marks originated 

 with signs or characters of numerical signification, denoting the 

 size, or indicating the situation of the stone, and that afterwards 



